Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

If you attended Howard University Homecoming’s “Rhythm Nation ’09 Yardfest”, held last Friday October 23rd, 2009 then you may have walked down Georgia Ave and passed the legendary McDonald’s whose parking lot was occupied by local radio station WPGC 95.5. From there you would’ve walked towards the Yard and either accepted or declined a number of promotional flyers. Once you arrived on the yard you would’ve had a selection of food and beverage vendors to buy from, in addition to the Pepsi booth in which attendees received free Pepsi drinks as announced by Yardfest host and 93.9 WKYS radio personality, Angie Ange.

Just before you arrive at the Yardfest stage, there are a number of merchandise vendors carrying everything from Greek Paraphernalia to Angela Davis t-shirts, located to the right. Known names Fabolous, Clipse, Nipsey Hussle and even Washington, DC’s own Wale were the day’s performance headliners. But, up-coming artists from places like Philadelphia, Atlanta, and NY also performed. The up-coming artists hailing from the DMV that took the Yardfest stage included Phil Ade, XO, Don Juan, K-Beta and DJ extraordinaire DJ Alizay. Phile Ade performed his single, “Hollywood” which has the entire DMV anticipating the release of its Tabi Bonney directed music video. Don Juan went in with his hit single “Lookie Looky”. XO performed“Do It” which is to be featured on his upcoming album, set to drop on the same date as the title “One One Ten”. DJ Alizay asked the crowd if they wanted to know who K-Beta is and then the two of them went into a set of songs from the “89 to 09” mixtape.

Listen to the audio clips, where both XO and K-Beta discuss how they prepared for the Yardfest and what they took away from their performance + what their next moves are + K-Beta discusses a track that may be featured on King Penslim’s Beam Up II, which features him, King Penslim, and XO, all headliners for the Capital City Music Tour…Listen:

Monday, October 26, 2009

Words Beats & Life, Inc. would like to thank the Lehrman Foundation for honoring our organization with the 2009 Impact Award. We are truly humbled by this recognition and this accomplishment is sure to strengthen the momentum of the work we're already doing in the community.

We would also like to highlight one of the biggest reasons that we were given this award, our DC Urban Arts Academy. Serving as one of our core program areas, the DCUAA provides comprehensive arts-based educational activities for hundreds of underserved youth and families during after school hours and during the summer. WBL serves kids city-wide, with an emphasis on Ward 7 (Benning Park Recreation Center in Southeast) and Ward 1 (St. Stephen's Church in Columbia Heights).We would like to send a special thanks to our Academy Director, Goldie Deane, and our Assistant Academy Director, Paige Mandel, as none of the successes of this amazing program would be possible without their hard work.

The previously scheduled bus trip to the new Mt. Rainer Skate Park has been re-scheduled to Saturday, November 7, 2009.

Dude Skateboards will once again team up with Maryland-National Capital Park & Planning Commission [M-NCPPC] to skate the new Mt. Rainer Skate Park. This trip will be in celebration and support of the forthcoming Cosca Regional Skate Park.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Every city has it’s underground rap legends, those unsung heroes who never broke nationally but are forever embedded deep into their city’s consciousness. Two decades before Wale became the city’s national rap poster boy, “Fat” Rodney Tyrone Martin was one of Washington DC’s eminent emcees locally. In just over a year of hopping on go-go stages throughout the city Fat Rodney’s tongue twisting style and charismatic performances earned him a rep as one of the city’s best freestylers. But that would be as far as Fat Rodney would go. On June 11th, 1989 he was tragically shot and killed outside of the Crystal Skate rink in Prince George’s County, MD. He was only 21 years old.

While his peers – DC Scorpio, Vinnie D, Stinky Dink, etc – would drop actual records to local and even some national acclaim, Rodney’s legacy remains limited to just a handful of freestyles on live PA recordings. (According to the Washington Post obituary, he had released or was about to record a song called “Busting Out”, but I’ve never actually seen or heard of a copy in my 8 years of looking for records and tapes in DC.) Well, that and an incredibly strong word of mouth. To hear old heads tell it, Rappin’ Rodney truly was the king of the go-go. If only for a brief period of time.

It’s been twenty years, to the day, since Rodney’s murder, and it seems like as good a time as any to put up this conversation with go-go legend and frequent Rodney collaborator Andre “Whiteboy” Johnson of Rare Essence. The interview was originally conducted May 30th, 2008 for a Fat Rodney feature that was intended for the DC issue of Stop Smiling magazine. That article had to be scrapped due to time constraints and my inability to track down anyone in Rodney’s family. (I’d still love to do something more in depth. If you were close to Rodney please feel free to drop me an email or leave a comment below.)

Noz: How did you guys first encounter Rodney?

Whiteboy: Rodney used to come and see the group play all the time, he was a regular patron.

How did he transition into performing?

Most go-go groups around here, especially back then, the way the we’d set up, we’d perform three or four nights a week and a lot of times the same people would come all three or four nights, so Rodney used to hang out with us a lot back then. And the more you come the more we get to know you and that’s when he told us “I do some rapping.” And then a couple of other guys from the neighborhood told us as well that he could freestyle rap. He would do a lot right off the top of his head, whatever he’s looking at he could rap about. So we would get him up there every now and then and he was already a big favorite in the neighborhood. He was already popular, but the fact that he was getting up there on stage and doing his rap thing and shouting people out, that just made him hugely popular here. He got a huge crowd response. From day one. He was rapping about stuff that was going on inside of the party and people that were inside of the party. He would incorporate some of their names into what he was doing. Everybody went crazy for him.

Were you surprised that he came out so talented at a young age?

We were pleasantly surprised when we first heard him rap. But all his friends used to tell us “man get Rodney up there, Rodney can rap.” I guess he was rapping in the neighborhood or rapping to them when they hang out together. When we first heard him he didn’t have anything prepared, he just started rapping off the top of his head, that is what was most impressive about him. It didn’t take him long, we would tell him “Rodney come on up and let’s do something.” He’d come right up there immediately and just start.

How frequently would he perform with you?

A lot of times it was two or three times a week. It got to the point that every night that he came out it was expected for him to get up there. People would ask Rodney “what time are you gonna get up there?” And he would say “whenever they call me up.” And of course we had to call him up [laughs]. Because there were people requesting him! “Bring Rodney up here!” We liked him too, we enjoyed his raps and his whole persona, his whole personality.

What do you remember about him personally?

Rodney was real cool. He was a very nice guy, always joking, always laughing. We used to call him our twenty minute rap star because any time we needed to fill twenty or thirty minutes in the set we could always depend on Rodney to come up there and do a couple of different raps over a couple of different beats.

Do you have any specific memories of hanging out with him?

We were playing at the Capital Center, it had to be about 12 or 15,000 people there and, of course, we had to bring up our twenty minute rap star. We had a song called “Lock It” in the early 90s and we had [our] verses, but Rodney would come up and do his own rap to “Lock It”. He came up and he did one particular rap and he did maybe about 16 bars and then he started actually locking it, there was a dance that went along with the song. All 15,000 people went crazy up in there. It was beautiful. People already knew him, but people that didn’t know him, they had to fall in love with him right there. That is the fondest memory that I had of him.

It’s interesting because his name always comes up when people around here talk about him but there’s so little information about him out there.

Yeah it is. I mean he wasn’t actually trying to be a rapper. I know he had talked about doing a record here and there. But Rodney, he just liked to come out and have fun, he liked to come out and be at the party.

I had read that he was going to put out a record, but it never materialized.

Yeah he had talked to us about that several times, but I got the sense that he was gonna get to it whenever he got it to it. It wasn’t a huge priority that he’d go into the studio and record an album. He was asking us “would y’all do the record with me?” and we were like “yeah, of course, what kind of question is that?” We told him whenever he was ready. The thing is, he operated on his time [laughs]. You couldn’t make him do anything. We told him, whenever you ready you just let us know and we’ll be there.

What do you think were the circumstances that lead to his murder?

I really don’t know much about that. I don’t know how it would happen because everybody was hugely popular. Of course, no matter how popular, somebody gonna be jealous of you. I don’t understand how, I don’t understand why, I know it was just a very sad thing. He brought a lot of joy to a lot of people. Now I didn’t hear about anything that he was into that might not have been in his best interest. Of course I wasn’t with him 24 hours a day, but whenever he came out to the party or I ran into him on the street he was always having a good time and people were always glad to see him. It’s very unfortunate.

How did the loss affect the go-go community?

We’ve lost a huge talent and part of being popular is your persona. When he walked into the room he lit the room up. There are a couple of other guys who had done it before, but I don’t think anybody [did] it to the extent that Rodney had done it. As so as he walked through the door, everybody was yelling his chant. “What you gonna do, Fat Rodney?!” So we lost a huge talent. And we lost a good friend because Rodney sat around with us for hours, just joking and talking and everything. DC lost a huge talent. Rodney was a great guy, personally. And he was a real good rapper, very observant. The fact that he’s rapping and he spots some girl in the crowd with a red shirt on, he’ll incorporate her into the rap. Spot the guy with the blue jacket on, he brings him into it. All of that is what made Rodney the legend that he is. It’s the reason you calling me now to even talk about him. All of that there helped to form Fat Rodney.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Diamonds In The Raw is a new book about the development of the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia)Music Movement from the past to the present. Diamonds In The Raw will be in area bookstores early next week, but you can get a copy now by sending me an e-mail (dcsupersid@aol.com or diamondsintheraw@hotmail.com).I will also be at the Howard Univ. Homecoming this weekend with copies of the book for sale.

Here are a few quotes from Diamonds In The Raw:

"Fat Rodney was like B.I.G. before B.I.G. was B.I.G." - Chucky Thompson

"Freestyle Union has made my standards so high. I have traveled all over the world. I have yet to witness that many masterful freestylers in one space." - Toni Blackman

"We were one of the first bands with a more hard driving beat. Raw Image laid the foundation for the Bounce Beat." - Big Sixx

"The Breakdown is the beat the Backyard Band made popular. It's basically the same beat from "Work The Walls" - DK (The Unseen Band)

"I will challenge any band, even The Roots and other mainstream groups - let's go toe-to-toe with all original material and we'll come out on top." - Whop (aka Wisdom Speaks)

Like so many Washington musicians before him, XO's story begins on U Street. The 24-year-old got his start there seven years ago, cutting his teeth at open mikes at now-shuttered venues Capital City Records and State of the Union. "Every week, continuously, I was building up my confidence and I was building a rapport," XO says of his early days.

Showmanship and business savvy might be in XO's DNA. His grandfather managed the renowned Washington soul group the Young Senators, his father drummed for Gil Scott-Heron and his mother is a Howard University-educated saxophonist. They knew go-go, too. "They used to be on the street playing go-go together -- my mother, my aunt, my father," XO says. "Playing down in Georgetown for money, slapping on buckets and all that."

After graduating from open mikes to club stages, XO began releasing mix tapes, a spate of which erupted this year: "Us vs. Them" built buzz in January, "Realmatic" turned heads in March and his finest work, "Monumental," has enjoyed over 30,000 downloads since June.

But unlike mix tape rappers desperate to leap out of your headphones, XO sounds cool and assured on "Monumental." The sheen of "Time Out" puts his detractors on ice, while "Crabs in a Barrel" captures the competitive angst that dominates not only Washington's musical spheres, but the city at large.

"People be rapping about materialistic stuff that doesn't matter and only lasts for so long," XO says. "What I'm targeting is emotions that people go through. Ten years from now, people will still be struggling and you'll be able to listen to my music and feel a little better."

KINGPEN SLIM

It's Tuesday night at Alexandria's Depth Charge Studios and everyone is huddled around the television as the Twins take the Tigers into extra innings. Between pitches,Kingpen Slim is dreaming big. "Success for me is Grammys, platinum records," he says. "I feel like that's my potential."

Like so many of Washington's ascendant rappers, the 27-year-old has both is defined by his limitless ambition -- and his connections to go-go. "I grew up in Adams Morgan and got my start rapping in a go-go band, " he says.

But where most aim to repurpose go-go's rhythmic verve, Slim adopts the music's playfulness. The rhymes are intricate and sly on his breakout mix tape "The Beam Up," with stand-out track "Powder 4 The Babies" putting his wit on full display: "Breathe/You hatin' and waitin' to exhale/You teeny, you eeny/I'm way XL."

With his star steadily rising, does Slim think that Wale's fate decides the future of the scene? "I don't feel like my success hangs on anybody else's," he says. "But we've already all benefited from [Wale's popularity]. It got everybody a lot more focused, got everybody a lot more serious about their craft . . . the music got better."

Fans will be able to hear the latest improvements next month when Slim headlines the Capitol City Music Tour, a series of local concerts featuring XO, K-Beta and others.

PHIL ADE

Phil Adé spent his teenage years in the Washington area, but his rap career began in a dorm room 700 miles away. "When I should have been asleep, I'd be up all night in the room next door, rapping," says Adé, reminiscing on his one and only semester at Oakwood University in Huntsville, Ala.

A college friend eventually introduced Adé to Maryland R&B crooner Raheem DeVaughn, who quickly signed the 21-year-old to his new label, 368 Music Group. In July, the rapper dropped "Starting on JV," a mix tape brimming with glossy beats and outsized boasts.

Adé speaks in a soft southern drawl completely absent from his live delivery, but he certainly doesn't lack confidence. " 'Starting on JV' is me making a statement," he says. "I'm one of the best new cats out here."

Adé's roommate, producer D.O.P.E. Sunny, is looping a 4 Non Blondes sample ad nauseam in the same room -- the only room in Adé's New Carrollton apartment with chairs. Adé speaks excitedly about a forthcoming mix tape collaboration with Atlanta's esteemed DJ Don Cannon -- meaning he might be able to furnish his apartment sooner rather than later.

"You're not doing anything until somebody walking down the street recognizes you," he says. "People just going to the grocery store -- they don't know Phil Adé. I still got a ways to go."

TABI BONNEY

Wale paved the way for plenty of regional hopefuls, but one rapper paved the way for him. Twenty-eight-old Tabi Bonney had a breakout hit with "The Pocket," a local anthem that dominated WPGC 95.5's rotation in 2006.

Since then, Bonney has become a linchpin in the scene, a rapper-turned-director who's shot videos for many of the city's up-and-coming MCs. He's acutely aware of the bigger cameras now zooming in on Washington. "You got 'The Real World D.C.,' 'The Housewives of D.C.,' " says Bonney. "The media spotlight is coming here."

Bonney grew up in West Africa, where his father, Itadi Bonney, was a musical superstar in their native Togo. The nation's civil unrest eventually brought Bonney and his family to Washington, where he began rapping in middle school. He formed a group called Bonney & Carter during his days at Banneker High School and performed with Organized Rhyme while earning a degree at Florida A&M.

Now, after two well-received solo discs, he's about to join another group: a Los Angeles-born pop outfit called the CryBabies. The group's resemblance to the Black Eyed Peas is no coincidence. Bonney's new bandmates were mentored by Will.I.Am.

Local rap fans might be surprised by the career move, but not Bonney. "I always knew I was gonna end up pop," he says. "D.C. is resistant to change, and those who are resistant to change get left behind. You have to look at the bigger picture."

BEST KEPT SECRET

Perhaps no one has more to gain from Wale's success than Best Kept Secret, the production duo of Craig Balmoris and Ernest Price. Better known as Craig B and Tone P, they are responsible for the go-go-influenced tracks that helped get Wale off the ground.

"We basically take all the [expletive] that's tight about go-go and fuse it with what's tight about hip-hop," Craig says. "Mash it together and bam! There you go."

Percussion is the duo's lingua franca, and in the basement studio where they work, they punctuate their sentences by clapping their hands or pounding their fists on armrests and tabletops. Craig and Tone are both 22 years old, first cousins who grew up in neighboring rowhouses on P Street SW. "We could bang on the walls to communicate," Craig says.

They met Wale through the Internet equivalent of banging down his door: "We harassed him on MySpace," Craig says. Their first collaboration was "Ice Cream Girl," a song that would eventually appear on HBO's "Entourage."

"We're like brothers," Wale says of his relationship to Craig and Tone. "We really make great music. It's like peanut butter and jelly."

Best Kept Secret has farmed out over 100 beats to a slew of Washington rappers, four of which made their way onto "Attention Deficit." No one has played a more vital role in weaning Washington eardrums off go-go and onto local hip-hop.

"A lot of people have closed ears. Living in D.C., you get trapped up in the go-go world, the accent, the culture," says Tone. "It's a tough city and it's hard to break through.

"Wale is the first guy out here and we're the music that's behind him," he says. "It's like our moment of truth."

Credit goes to Chris Richards for writing this Washington Post piece.

Dope article and congrads to the people were spotlighted. Once this hit twitter I started getting alot of emails and calls about those not featured. I hear yall voices and if your issue is warranted or not these are the people chosen to be spotlighted so live with it. Congrads to them. I dont think this is the last time we will see a piece like this in the paper because of the strides metro music is making. There will be more write-ups just make sure you or your team is making enough noise to get noticed.

However with me having to speak my mind and in my personal opinion I wish Innerloop Records was mentioned and or spotlighted. Those guys have killed this year and had several official events, videos, etc... that showcased each and every one of these guys in the post just so they could be heard. This leads me to believe that the person writing this doesnt completely have his ear to the streets etc...

I was asked on Wednesday by someone that will remain nameless " am i mad i didnt get recognized". Not at all! Not at all! I'm proud to see people I have worked with and/or help along the way get shine. Im just a little ol producer and when it comes to media thier focus is on the artist and the artist story. This is media and entertainment folks. It is what it is!

Sunday Im having a historical moment in DMV music for alot of folks that do not get recognized and these same people in this post article are included. So that speaks volumes.